Kuttay!!!!

You would have loved Sunnybhai had you met him. He was suave, sophisticated, well mannered, had a sense of humour and the never say die attitude that all Germans seem to be born with. He could walk with the kings and still not lose the common touch and Kipling could have had SunnyBhai in his mind when he said this. He was a dog made especially by the Gods.

Sunnybhai came into our lives when he was hardly a month old. “It’s a German Spitz”, one of his doctor’s said and we were all proud to have a foreigner home. He was brought up with Indian values, though, no beer or beef for him. A German Spitz looks exactly like a Pomeranian by the way, so the ignorant would come up and call it a ‘Pomerian’ and we, wounded pride and all corrected them by telling them about its German antecedents. Of course Sunnybhai cared two figs about his nationality. He could have as well been from Mars as long as he was getting his daily egg with milk.

The first challenge that we faced with Sunnybhai was what name to give him. I knew of a friend whose dog was called Jimmy. Jimmy as all cricket lovers would know was the pet name of Mohinder Amarnath. With a brilliant piece of lateral thinking I could not go beyond Sunil Gavaskar for my pet’s name. Other options did not sound too good (You cant call your dog Kapil Dev Nikhanj ). The name was seconded by my sister. You see, it went well with the image. I have seen people call there dogs Choco when the only thing brown about it would be the belt around its neck. ‘Sunny’ for an off white dog was, well, par for the course.

When we saw him for the first time, he was small enough to put his face inside my shoes and sleep. He had this thing for fresh air. But by the 5^th month he became too big for his shoes as it were. And his sleeping habits became a little more refined. Sunnybhai could not sleep without the pillow and he made that clear in no uncertain terms. You would be sleeping alone in the night and by the morning you would feel something white and fluffy besides you. The adjacent pillow would have been pre-populated (as techies love to say) and the dog would be sleeping like a log. There were constant admonitions by mummy over this habit of his. But Sunny bhai would make sure that he came back to ground when people were looking and back to the bed when people weren’t. For him ethics came a poor second to cold logic.

One of the downsides of being a canine is that humanity does not seem to appreciate the things that they love to do. For example, Sunnybhai’s idea of a morning well spent was to roll in cow dung. If he was let loose outside, he would make sure that he had the content of 3 cows on him before you could say “BULLSHIT”. The bath that followed was just a small price to pay for the fun. That forced us to take stringent measures and Sunnybhai was confined to home for the best part of the day except for the daily walk (with a chain around its neck, of course).

Sunnybhai could be brave. Especially when he was inside the house with the gate locked. I have seen him bark at animals way bigger than him. He had a mouthful for an elephant once, that passed by which sounded more in lines of “you-are-lucky-that-the-gate-is-locked”. None of the animals chose to respond back. Actually only the dogs responded to the tub thumping (Maybe because they understood whatever he said, and whatever he said was not very pleasant). I remember him starting off with a friendly tete-a-tete with a neighbourhood Pomeranian and it ended in a major scuffle. It took all of my negotiation skills to extricate Sunnybhai from the mess.

One of the great things of having a dog around in house is the amount of attention they shower on you. Especially when you are back home after a long time. Their eyes light up, the ears go down and their tail speaks a thousand words. And none of it is dependent on how you treat them.

This world can do with a few humans like that .